NEW DELHI: The Times of India has designed a neat logo that it sticks at the top of every article about India's thriving economy or growing international importance: a small spinning wheel, the national symbol, alongside the words "Global Indian Takeover."
Sometimes the articles deemed to reflect the nation's unstoppable rise are persuasive - Indian corporate successes, rising share prices, Booker Prize victories. More often they are bewilderingly trifling.
In a front-page article this week, the latest evidence of India's rising power was the rather underwhelming news that a girl of Indian-origin had become Miss Great Britain. The "Global Indian Takeover" slogan was stamped next to a pouting picture of Preeti Desai.
The Times of India, the nation's largest-selling English-language paper, is chasing a trend. This desire to highlight every small achievement as proof of India's unstoppable rise has become a national sport. An obsessive conviction that India is destined for international supremacy is spreading fast.
Over the past few years there has been a rush to invest India with nascent superpower status. Banks predict India will become the world's third- largest economy in the next couple of decades, a CIA report forecasts that the 21st century will be India's. Every visiting foreign dignitary pauses to pay tribute to India's relentless ascent to economic, international glory.
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